


(never be) what you want me to be

by jvo_taiski



Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - All Media Types, The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Experimental Style, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Sad, Soft Drugs, Unresolved Sexual Tension, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29717991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jvo_taiski/pseuds/jvo_taiski
Summary: Tim struggles to arrange his thoughts into something he can verbalise, something that will express his frustration more effectively than throwing a punch. Dal doesn't know what to make of it.
Relationships: Tim Shepard/Dallas Winston
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	(never be) what you want me to be

“Who the hell are you to me?”

It’s not unusual, sprawled beside the railway tracks with one too many bottles of liquor between them. But Dal’s got a faint smile on when he sinks down and leans against the brick, long legs stretched over the ground as he lights up a smoke.

Tim opens his mouth, scrunches up his eyebrows, closes it again. “Who the hell are you to me?” he repeats.

“Man, the hell do you mean? What kind of question—?”

“Are we friends? I don’t—”

Dal’s looking at him funny now, chewing his bottom lip as he flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette. Tim’s fascinated by the little white teeth, almost glowing in the dark as they worry a loose piece of skin between them, a single bead of blood starting to well underneath it. He’s gotta be careful or he’ll end up splitting it again, before it’s healed.

* * *

_You get into another fight, and he comes out of it grinning, reckless. Wild-eyed boy, chin up, don’t touch. Thumb over his bottom lip where it bleeds._

_He’s got a bust lip. They’re usually so thin but it’s swollen purple-red now, so vivid, and you want to touch but you’ve got some sort of self-preservation so you reach out and flick it instead, just hard enough that you know it’ll sting. You watch the way his pale eyebrows fly up, the way he takes a tiny step backwards and the way his hand flies to hover over the place you touched._

_Looks like you finally got some lip, boy, you say, and a glare replaces wide-eyed surprise._

_Shut th’fuck up, he scowls, and he reaches out and gives your bottom lip a yank. You don’t know how to feel, so you settle for kneeing him in the gut._

* * *

“I don’t have fucking friends,” Tim slurs, letting his head fall backwards. The stars are out. He just about manages to stop himself from saying it out loud. “I don’t fuckin’ have friends, Dal. I don’t trust nobody. Not anyone in my goddamned gang, not my kid brother or sister. I don’t—”

He pauses again, struggling to arrange loose strings of thought into a point, to force what he wants to verbalise into something concise, something that can express aching frustration more effectively than throwing a punch. “Do we count as friends?”

“Sure, Tim,” he says, with that peculiar grin of his, head tilted, eyes narrow. “D’you wanna try talking to me when you ain’t wasted off your ass?”

“But that—fuck.” Tim takes a long breath of smoke and resumes his staring at the sky. “Thas’ my fuckin’ point. We never say shit when we’re sober and we ain’t never bring it up again. You dig?”

He sighs, defeated, and snaps, “Fuck it. All anyone thinks we do is fight, anyhow.”

“Nah,” says Dally, slow, guarded. “People know we’re buddies”

“Buddies, huh?” Tim scoffs. He tries out the word on his tongue. It rolls off, short, casual. It’s alright.

* * *

_You share your bed, once. It’s no big deal; he’s on the left, you’re facing the wall. But it dips under his weight and it makes you want to roll towards him, like he’s the centre of your gravity. But you ignore it and your own pulse thumping._

_Until you wake up warm, your arm slung over bony ribs and white-blonde hair tickling your lips. And it’s. Nice. Your mind isn’t awake yet, and you don’t start trying to detangle yourself until it’s too late._

_A second of eye contact, startled blue eyes, and the both of you are springing apart. He leaves, and you avoid each other for a week until he pisses you off again, and it goes unsaid that you never speak about it again._

* * *

Tim rolls to his side, bracing himself on a forearm to glance up at Dallas—he’s surprised to find him already looking, with the traces of a frown on his face. It’s strange, being this close, but not unwelcome. And this close—

“Your eyelashes are blonde,” Tim thinks, maybe says. He can’t really tell.

And apparently, he’s said it out loud because this ungainly snort slips from Dallas’ nose and a grin tugs at the corner of his lips. “What fuckin’ colour did ya think they were?”

He stubs his cigarette out on Tim’s jeans and blows the last bit of smoke in his face and Tim’s too wasted to care. “I dunno,” he realises. “Never thought about it.”

Tim squints, and tilts his head. “Maybe I never realised you even had eyelashes.”

“What kind of stupid—”

Dal’s words seem to die in his throat when Tim leans that tiny bit impossibly closer, a little unsteady. He could count each and every eyelash if he wanted to—glowing, like his teeth, like his skin, his hair. Pale. They look ethereal, tiny strands of liquid light melting normally icy eyes, making them wide and young and impossibly warm. Dal lets out a sharp breath that coasts over Tim’s cheek, hot. It smells like tobacco and menthol and whiskey and his pale skin is flushed, the sheen of sweat reflecting the soft orange light that makes it to the train tracks.

* * *

_Young and towheaded. Shifty eyes, sharp features. Should be ugly, but looks so good with another._

_Sylvia’s not a steady girl but Dal ain’t a steady guy. Light and dark, flame meets flame. You’re not steady either, but you’ve never tried to be. Maybe you could. Be steady. If you had something worth staying steady for._

_You’re in the shower, and sometimes, you can’t help wondering, can’t help imagining when you let your guard down. A body against yours, security. Something permanent, something to hold onto. Hot shame for even dreaming about it, about a New York boy, raised wild, a buddy. Steady in his own way._

_No daddy, yours walked out and your mama’s a junkie, your kid sister’s a whore and your kid brother’s just like you. Angela, where are you going? No point trying to stop her, she learned how to escape, learned it from the best._

_Should be ugly, still makes you shiver when you run your own hand down your chest, down, down, and pretend you’re not dreaming of something else. Steady._

* * *

A thumb, gently brushed over his cheekbone, fleeting, and it makes Tim shiver. He thinks that maybe, if his head wasn’t swimming, he would have reached out to hold it in place. But if the world wasn’t spinning they wouldn’t have been here either, too close. Dangerous.

A little huff of laughter, skimming his nose, his lips. “You’ve got real long eyelashes, Timothy. Just like a girl’s.”

“Hey.” Tim frowns and draws back a little, just so Dal’s face is in focus again, but not far enough that he can’t see the little scar above his left eyebrow. “Yours are long too, only they’re so fuckin’ yellow that ain’t nobody can see ‘em.”

But he’s not sure if he should be defensive when Dal’s voice is uncharacteristically soft, and he’s still got this look of faint amusement lingering around his features.

“An’ stop callin’ me Timothy.”

“Whatever, Timothy. I like sayin’ it.”

Does he do this with anyone else, Tim wonders? Lie on the ground and just look up and talk, with the occasional rumble of a train his only other company?

* * *

_You’ll kiss him one day, when you’re smoking in the kitchen, home alone, and closer together than you have any right to be. You’ll turn around to face him, hazy through a cloud of smoke—a mirage, but solid, tangible, thigh pressed hot and hard against yours. And you’ll find him already looking, like he somehow always is._

_You won’t know who moves first, maybe the both of you, but his lips are soft, so soft, even though there’s not much there. Clumsy, tentative, dry, like a first kiss behind the lockers in middle school. His fingers will curl through yours and your other hand will find his face, baby-smooth, the little hair that grows there still delicate and wispy._

_And it’s then that you’ll realise, then that you breathe in and smell his sweat, taste the marijuana on his lips, feel his cold hand brushing your chest, right over where your heart is thudding, bang, bang, bang._

* * *

“You’re really fucking wasted, aren’t you?” Dal snickers, and again, it doesn’t sound mean. It’s only kind of fond, with a rare kind of warmth that makes something flutter inside Tim’s ribcage.

“Yeah,” Tim mumbles. “Yeah, m’wasted.”

* * *

_And it’s then that you’ll remember who he is and who you are and you break away and can’t breathe, thoughts heavy like sand, and oh god—_

_But he’ll break through your spiralling panic, voice clear and New York drawl annoying as ever. Breathe, Shepard, he’ll say, bony fingers cool around your wrists. C’mon, I ain’t that bad at kissing, am I? A little humour, a little light._

_You don’t ever want to touch him again, but he stays while you hunch over the sink and gasp, trying to catch your breath, trying not to retch. I ain’t a fag, you choke out, and you don’t know who you’re trying to convice because he knows and you know and in some fucked-up way you’re glad he knows even if you can’t stop hating yourself for it._

_And you’ll let him rest a hand on your back, and that will cut through the haze in your mind, the blind panic and the tightness in your chest._

_What would the old man say? If he came back one day and found his son kissing a boy? Maybe he knew, all those years ago, maybe that’s why he left._

* * *

And Tim flops back to the ground, away from soft features, snaps the thread between them and shuts his eyes. He focuses on soothing the spinning in his head and taking slow, deep breaths of cool night air and he must fall asleep because he wakes up to sharp pain, and someone kicking his ribs.

He staggers to his feet, flicking out his switchblade in an instant—it catches the dim light, reflects the rain in grey. The cold water on his face sobers him up enough to see Dallas, grinning in his cat-like way, sharp teeth bared, and both his hands up in mock surrender.

Tim groans and slumps against the wall, shoving his blade into his back pocket. The world won’t stop heaving in circles so he braces his forearm against the same wall and tries to take another breath. He turns and hunches and hurls instead, liquor and bile and rain splattering the ground, the toes of his shoes.

“Lightweight candy-ass,” snickers Dal, and Tim flips him off with a shaky finger as he spits and groans again.

“Fuck. Wha’s the time?” The wall, at least, is grounding. It’s solid and digs into his forearm, sobering him a little more.

“I dunno. Think it’s around four in the morning.”

“God _damn,”_ mutters Tim, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and tentatively pushing off the wall. It’s alright, he doesn’t fall. He doesn’t even stumble. “Fuck. You got some place to stay for the night?”

“Nah.”

“D’you wanna—?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Neither of them mentions it when Dal curls up on the left and Tim faces the wall again, ignoring the dip in the bed and the empty space between them. The warmth radiating from Dal's body does little but remind him just how cold he feels.

* * *

_Lips together, one day, and that’s fine, that’s alright. They’re not there to stay._

**Author's Note:**

> listened to Disappear by Mazzy Star while writing, and that's where the title came from 
> 
> idk what the writing style was, but anyway. 
> 
> as usual, kudos + comments appreciated, and my tumblr is @jvo_taiski 
> 
> Jx


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